While Congress stagnates, your tax dollars are hard at work – National Consumers League

Here’s a thought. When you’re feeling disheartened about partisan bickering in Congress, think about this: your tax dollars are supporting the work of outstanding, hard-working, and knowledgeable public servants who’ve got your back. Last week, my colleague Kelsey Albright and I met with an EPA staffer who gave us a crash course on food waste. Nearly 30% of the food US agriculture produces is wasted!

Not only is she knowledgeable about the subject, she also helped us understand the part played by each sector in the food-supply chain, including us consumers. NCL is considering what we can do to help address this important problem.

Later that day, Rebecca Burkholder, Ayanna Johnson, and I met with a cheerful and equally hard-working team at FDA to talk about NCL’s Script Your Future medication adherence campaign. FDA supports the campaign, which is complementing its mission of ensuring that the prescription and OTC drugs that Americans take are safe and effective and that consumers understand how to take them properly. They are doing a lot at FDA with very limited staff and resources,

On March 11-12, Rebecca will participate in a two-day meeting convened by CERTs, the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research’s Centers for Drug Education and Research in Therapeutics. The meeting will focus on what’s working to boost adherence. The AHRQ staffer who organized the meeting, herself a physician, has generously invested time and energy in the issue and in Script Your Future.

We could all list many more federal government employees who exhibit the same traits: strong commitment to public service, deep substantive knowledge coupled with a sophisticated understanding of their issue’s political implications, an enthusiastic willingness to engage with consumers and with stakeholder groups like NCL.